Baby wooly monkey rescued from the pet trade gets a surrogate mom — watch as they get released to the wild with their new family. Ojo's rescuer told us about her recovery and the emotional moment they saw her months after her release!
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00When she first came in, she would cover her face.
00:02She would want to hide from the world.
00:05I saw a little bag of bones
00:08that vaguely resembled a baby woolly monkey.
00:13We discovered that she actually also had
00:15a gunshot pellet in her jaw.
00:18Once she plucked up the courage
00:19to kind of look at me directly,
00:21I saw these huge, beautiful eyes.
00:24Kind of knew at that moment
00:25that she had a chance to survive.
00:28So the immediate plan is to give her one-on-one care.
00:34So it started off very, very slow,
00:35just hand-feeding her.
00:40Making sure that she had the strength inside her,
00:43and then trying to encourage her to move around,
00:48get those muscles going.
00:52And so it's really about her personality coming out
00:55just as important as the physical side of it
00:58and the health side of it.
01:03We started taking her out into the jungle
01:05so she can start to learn to climb
01:07and develop that agility into the trees.
01:11And then you start to see
01:13this beautiful personality coming out.
01:16And she was a very gentle, tender monkey.
01:20So it took us about six months
01:22to get her back to health
01:25in order to get her into a position
01:27where we could actually introduce her
01:28into other individuals of her own species.
01:33We had another couple of monkeys,
01:35one adult female called Carminha,
01:37and another young female,
01:39about Occle's age, called Leo.
01:42And Carminha was a really great surrogate mother for her.
01:51As her confidence grew,
01:53her playfulness grew.
01:56And then we introduced her and Leo
01:59to a group of boys in order to form a group for release.
02:05So we had all of them in together for quite a few months.
02:08They could form a bond.
02:11Because the most important part is once they're released,
02:13they need to use each other for support.
02:16The day finally came for release.
02:18We did a soft release on them.
02:19So we helped them by supplementing their food
02:22so they can get used to their surrounding area.
02:25And they don't have to really rely
02:26on the jungle straight away.
02:29They did amazing.
02:30They really did.
02:31They surpassed all of our expectations.
02:37It became really evident
02:38that they didn't need so much of our help.
02:40So we were able to get them out of the jungle
02:42It became really evident
02:43that they didn't need so much of our help.
02:45So we just kind of left them to it
02:47and we would sporadically go off and check.
02:53And then one day came
02:55that we found them with a wild group.
02:57They were interacting with a wild group,
02:59which was like an incredibly emotional moment
03:02for the whole team.
03:04To get from Ojo coming in at such a tiny, frail stage
03:07To get from Ojo coming in at such a tiny, frail stage
03:12and seeing her out in the jungle
03:14interacting with wild groups of woolly monkeys
03:17is just incredible.
03:20It's amazing to see her now up in the trees.
03:22It's just such a special moment for us.
03:34It's just such a special moment for us.